CBS’s JonBenét Ramsey Special Proves That The Trashy Side Of True Crime Is Alive And Well

Over the last few years, the true crime genre has experienced not only a renaissance but a kind of prestige and respectability that the genre had never previously enjoyed. From Serial to Making a Murderer to The Jinx to the multiple revisitings of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, true crime has not only become massively popular but also highly acclaimed. And while The People v. O.J. Simpson was busy collecting trophy after trophy at the Emmys last night, CBS decided to counter-program with one of the fruits of the new true-crime renaissance: the first in a two-part series revisiting the 1996 murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

The Ramsey murder was enough of a media sensation that most people don’t need to much jogging to remember the broad strokes of the case: in the wee hours of December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey called 911 and reported that her daughter had been kidnapped, as she had found a ransom note; later that day, JonBenét’s father, John, and a neighbor discovered her dead body, bound and gagged, in the house’s wine cellar. Party due to the fact that JonBenét had participated in child beauty pageants, the murder case set off a media firestorm, with suspicion nearly immediately falling on John and Patsy Ramsey. While no charges were ever brought against the family, it was revealed in 2013 that a grand jury had voted to indict the Ramseys in 1999, only the district attorney found there to be insufficient evidence. Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006.

Now, 20 years later and in the midst of a booming economy for televised true crime, CBS beings us The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey, wherein investigators Jim Clemente (a retired FBI profiler) and Laura Richards (from Scotland Yard) have teamed up to re-examine the evidence and try to put the case back together again. I’m not often onboard with the idea that true crime is necessarily exploitive or ghoulish in its poring over the details of real-life crimes, a production like this has to make a case for itself for existing, and at least based on the first half of the special that aired on Sunday night, The Case Of hasn’t. Rather, from minute one, it feels like a forensic sheen has been layered over the same kind of gossip and suppositions that have dogged the Ramsey case for 20 years.

Clemente and Richards begin by dissecting Patsy Ramsey’s 911 call, and in particular examining the enhanced versions of the phone call that certainly do appear to have other voices speaking in the background. The phrases that appear to be heard (and I’ll stress appear, as they are not nearly as clear-cut as the show says they are) are either too ambiguous (“we’re not speaking to you”) or too generic (“holy Jesus”) to point to anything, really. But it’s here, at this early stage, that you start to pick up on the show’s agenda. These snippets from the phone call don’t really point to much, except that idea that JonBenét’s brother Burke (who the Ramseys claim was asleep) was present. These revelations only feel like revelations if you’re going in with the suspicion (popular among many who have followed the case) that Burke Ramsey is the one who killed JonBenét and the Ramseys went to great length to cover it up.

This is also where the rather grisly reenactment of the murder blow comes into play. Clemente and Richards go to great lengths to set up the idea that JonBenét was killed not by strangulation as suspected but by a blow to the head. Perhaps by the flashlight that was found in the Ramsey house? Perhaps a flashlight heavy enough to crack a six-year-old skull, even when wielded by someone without much strength. If anybody by this point was slow on the uptake about where Clemente and Richards were driving with all this, the show produces a 10-year-old boy to simulate a blow with a flashlight to a small skull. It is a shockingly theatrical moment played with obnoxious clerical seriousness by the investigators, and it’s that tone that permeates the entire program.

The rest of the “evidence” dug up by the team involves a series of gossipy interviews — with the 911 dispatcher; with an old family friend of the Ramseys who is very clearly holding a grudge after being ostracized by the family for speaking to the press back in ’97 — and an analysis of John and Patsy’s media appearances in the aftermath of the case, none of which offer much perspective beyond that of a klatch of housewives watching daytime TV and parsing things like tone of voice and body language.

The most convincing parts of the special were the ones focused on the preposterously long ransom note, a truly bizarre concoction full of cribbed movie dialogue (I was embarrassingly proud of myself for catching a line from Speed) and strange details that does indeed seem rather unlikely as a genuine ransom note. That’s the thing: it’s not like there’s nothing to suggest that the Ramseys might have either killed their daughter or helped cover it up. It may well be that — as the show is unsubtly (if coyly) suggesting — Burke Ramsey killed his sister. And of course there is a whole other second part to the special tonight for the investigators to make their case. But because The Case Of does a pretty terrible job of establishing either narrative or context, it all feels like so much slimy rubbernecking.

The reason why The Jinx and Making a Murderer and the O.J. programs were so successful (popularly and with critics) is because they were wildly successful at telling stories that unfolded like dramas, bringing the audience into stories that set up the producers’ case brick-by-brick. And they also (especially in the case of O.J. Simpson) never stopped providing the crucial context that explained not just the “who” and “how” of the investigation but the “where” and “why.” The Case Of seems to have a bombshell of a “who” in their pocket, but not a whole lot else.